Gizmodo to be acquired for the second time in 4 years / Boing Boing

"The private equity firm Great Hill Partners has agreed to buy the Gizmodo Media Group from Univision, which is a new company led by digital media exec Jim Spanfeller," reports Wall Street Journal's Benjamin Mullin.

Excerpt:

For The second time in four years, the former Gizmodo Media Group – the home of both the eponymous tech site, as well as Deadspin, Jezebel, The Onion, The Root and ClickHole, among others ̵[ads1]1; has a new owner. Great Hill Partners, a private equity company based in Boston, has entered into an agreement to purchase the Gizmodo Media Group from Univision for what is likely to be "much less than $ 135 million Univision paid in 2016 to acquire most Gizmodo properties." [19659004] Wow.

The agreement was previously reported by WSJ as a potential alternative for GMG, so it does not come as a total blow, as NYMag's Madison Malone Kircher writes:

Also for the second time in asia For many years the company will get a name change. Gizmodo Media Group will still be known as G / O Media Inc. – a nod to Gizmodo and onion, both GMG properties. The new boss will Jim Spanfeller, who worked at Forbes.com, PC Magazine and RealClearPolitics.

Spanfeller sent an e-mail to his infamous independent new staff this morning, saying he is looking forward to meeting everyone soon and answering their (probably many) questions. Including those about editorial independence: "While editorial independence is critically important, it must be a healthy and productive business side partnership for the company to be truly successful," wrote Spanfeller. "Without an audience, we have nothing to offer advertisers, e-commerce partners or subscription work. And without the revenue from those sources, we have no way to fund the content and those who create what attracts that audience in the first place." He also explained that he wants Establishing a new set of values ​​for the company and drafting a rough outline of his ideas. "Please help make these better and perhaps more adapted to G / O Media."

Here we go.

I think we all always wanted to see private-equity-owned-blogging-at-scale and by god we now get the chance https://t.co/BtkqkCf781

– Joshua Benton (@jbenton) April 8, 2019

Here is an excerpt from From Spanfeller's e-mail:

· We are action-oriented. When we face an action alternative vs. in-action, we always choose to do something.

· We believe in our people. We respect our teammates. We know that if they "do something", they will, much more often than not, do the right thing.

· We are ambitious. Both as a company and as individuals. We want our people to always look to take the next step in everything they do. BEING ORIENTED.

· We respect and value our customers. Without visitors, we would not have any marketing partners without marketing partners that we could not serve our users. To protect both of these very important groups, we do business with the highest levels of integrity. In how we deliver content and how we perform our daily business activities.

· We want our working environment to be a place where people can be passengers and have fun.

LOL.

OK.

] Rafat Ali tweeted it best.

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xeni jardin

Boing Boing editor / partner and technology culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's TV channel on the plane of Virgin America airlines (# 10 on the dial) and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @ xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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